Flour has become impossible to find, and bread is also scarce. I’d like to make a yeast loaf or two, but don’t have enough all-purpose flour. Here’s what I do have:
About 2 cups all-purpose flour
About 3 pounds of self-rising flour
A 32oz box of Swan’s Down cake flour
I know that using two leavening agents is not good, as you can get an over-proofed loaf, and that there’s also the issue of the salt in self-rising flour. I can mitigate the salt by not adding any additional to the dough.
So the question is: what would be the problems with mixing the three flours together, and adding yeast to the resulting product? Can I get a decent loaf from this, or is disaster the only outcome?
The bread I’m looking to bake is a batter bread baked in a casserole dish, not a traditional loaf bread.
I would Google bread recipes, I’d use all the all purpose flour first. The only draw back might be it not fully rise. I would also add a bit of sugar (1/2 teaspoon) to offset the other flour. If it will rise any, it should be ok.
Throw in some cake flour also.
2c. All purpose
1c. Cake flour
1c. Self rising.
Yeah, I was thinking about the same quantities, but wondering if I need to cut back on the yeast amount because of the baking powder in the self-rising flour.
I tried googling about mixing the two types of flour, but the only answers I found were along the lines of “bad idea” because of over-proofing. So I’m thinking that if I cut back on the yeast (2 pg. called for), it may be okay. Thing is, I don’t want to waste any flour with experimentation.
I’d make your bread with the all-purpose and the cake flours only, but save the self-rising for another use. And because the cake flour is so low on gluten, either use a little more than the single envelope of yeast, or give it a longer proof/rise to develop more.
Save the self-rising flour for when you want biscuits or quick bread or some such (since it has baking powder instead of yeast in it).
-needscoffee, ex-pastry chef, but only intermediate breadbaker
Sounds plausible. I actually have a bag of yeast that I scored at the beginning of the crazy, so can mete it out as needed. So maybe two cups of AP and 2 cups of cake? The only problem I have with this idea is that will deplete my AP to a negligible amount, and I’d like to get two loaves out of what is left.
You got any vital gluten (do-pep) lurking in a dark corner? Adding gluten would give you the framework for the cake flour to do its texture thing.
~VOW
Let us know what you end up doing and how it turns out.
I’m sure you’ve already considered and discarded the idea - you specifically say you’d like to make a yeast bread - but why not make a non-sweet quick bread like corn bread? I’d probably either do that, or make some kind of bastardized focaccia, where the rising could be a little iffy/uneven and it wouldn’t really matter.
This bread is an old family favorite going back at least 60 years. It has oregano and Parmesan cheese in it. So it’s a comfort food during times like this.
I ended up going with
1 cup AP
2 cups self-rising
1 cup cake flour
I also used the full amount of yeast, but left out the tsp of salt because of the self-rising flour. It doubled in bulk in about a half hour :eek: . Baked up nice and brown, smells great, but the crumb is a bit close; I was going to say dense, but that implies heavy, which it’s not. Anyway, it’s edible and will go good with the roasted tomato/white bean stew tonight.
@chefguy Portlandia is in serious shortages? Costco as well?
Maybe because we are right next to the original epicenter of Kirkland WA, but Seattle has gone thru the whole whording thing and pretty much come out the other side. Costco had no flour for pretty much a month. Then a few bags of two 10 pound organic flour, and a few days ago had their 25# bags of flour. Bread yeast was fully stocked but you have to buy a costco size (I still have most of a pound of bread yeast I bought several years ago in the freezer, and it still works).
Costco and the local supermarket still has shortages depending on luck of the draw the day you go. And there are signs limiting to 1 per customer. Otherwise, not too widespread except for dried beans are no where to be found in any incarnation.
I make all our bread, bagels, pastries, everything.
I wouldn’t even use all-purpose flour to make bread unless I had high gluten flour. I use bread flour exclusively for sandwich bread, challah & bagels. I even add a little HGF to sandwich bread when I have bread flour. You need a lot of protein to make bread.
Now, dinner rolls, you can make with all-purpose flour. The self-rising flour might even be OK, because I have seen a few recipes that call for a pinch of baking powder, and they usually need a lot of salt.
Even if the recipe doesn’t call for it, dinner rolls could have a 1/2 tsp of that malt powder added, and the crust will be really nice-- assuming it isn’t outdated.
If I could get bread flour, I wouldn’t have started this thread. I can’t even get AP flour. Not available online, even from the folks that make the stuff, like King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill.
China Guy: Yeah, the same shortages here as anywhere. Also, deliveries are a good week out. I’m assuming this will abate in the next couple of weeks.
Where are you? I’ve got a ton of white flour, whole wheat flour, bread flour, all-purpose flour, pastry flour, rye flour, and even a few other things, like almond flour.
I’ve never had any problems using AP flour for bread, pizza, etc. I just made a delicious pizza today using Target’s generic AP flour and it turned out great (after a 5-day fridge ferment; used a little bit of diastatic malt powder, as well. 75% hydration.)
It won’t help you this time, Chefguy, but I keep a box of vital wheat gluten around for just such moments. You can add about a tablespoon of gluten to every 2-3 cups of AP flour to increase the protein content enough to use it as a bread flour substitute. I don’t know if it will work as well on cake flour, but it can’t hurt.
The stuff keeps forever and is fairly inexpensive. Works well.
ETA: Bob’s Red Mill is out of stock till June, but you can still get the stuff under other brands on Amazon if you want it sooner. I just included the link to show you what it is.
About having only hard flour. Do you also have cornstarch? One part by weight cornstarch, to eight parts hard flour, gives you, more or less, regular flour. That’s just under three tablespoons cornstarch, and the rest hard flour.
We ought to exchange bread recipes themselves here. What do people want?
Recipes using gluten-free flour! Please! I ordered flour, and it ended up being GF. Returning it would be a gigantic pain in the butt. Cookies–bread–muffins–waffles, anything!
VOW, what kind of gluten free flour do you have? There are all sorts of gluten free substitutes: Rice, almond, garbanzo bean, etc. They are all different in how they act in recipes. If we know the main ingredients in the flour you have, it will help to give you recipes best suited to the product.